Establishing A Beachhead In A Crowded Genre

Your
division has just been purchased by a massive French media
conglomerate, and you’ve been given the Sisyphean task of creating
a game that’s “like X, but better.” If you succeed, your team
will get massive bonuses and tendinitis. If you fail, you just get
the tendinitis. If you haven’t quit at this point, you’re going
to have to accomplish the most difficult task a game developer can:
carving out a beachhead in an established genre.

There
are many reasons to create a game in an established or even
hotly-contested genre. A hot license might have become available.
Creating content might seem more appealing than redesigning the
wheel. A key figure on the team may have been a longtime Mario
addict. A publisher might not sign onto the game until someone can
point to an existing one.

Or maybe someone else made the decision
that the team is going to “out Warcraft” Warcraft. Whatever the
case, you have to make that happen on 1/4th their budget and in time
for a Christmas release. Failing to meet this challenge can break
months of work, as well as your team’s enthusiasm.

Thankfully,
we’ve got the missteps of 30 odd generations of games behind us to
study. Some of the rules that emerge from these are relevant to all
games, not just beachhead games. But we won’t talk about those.
Some rules appear to be broken from time to time by a successful game
or other. Upon closer inspection, however, the game usually breaks
the superficial aspects of the rule while reinforcing the fundamental
point.

1.
Gut key elements of the design

A
favorite professor of mine used to say that if your painting has
enchanting eyes but you can’t make anything else in it work…
paint out the eyes. That element of the painting is causing a local
minima, which is to say that element of the design might be good in
and of itself, but it’s keeping the painting from reaching a point
where the overall image was great.

Examples of this in your genre
might include: sniper rifles in an FPS, powerslides in a racing game,
minigames in a Wii title, healing crates, bosses, rocket jumps, or
any other big or small element. Of course, the really good features
shouldn’t be the only ones on the chopping block. Not only will
this free up time in the schedule that would otherwise be occupied by
been-done features, but it creates space for genuinely new solutions
and makes producers very, very happy.

Removing
these old structures changes the player’s experience. Probably
the best example of "strip and add" success is Wii Sports.
As traditional mainstream tennis games go, Wii sports is poorly
lacking. There is no ball selection, no racket selection, no
character selection, no arena selection, no stats to power up... not
really much but playing tennis. Even player control of the character
was removed from the formula. Ultimately this lets the player
concentrate exclusively on the unique new aspect of racket control,
and allows them to play it in a different context.

Unlike Sega’s
Virtua Tennis or Rockstar’s Table Tennis, this makes Wii Tennis
great for pick-up games with non-players, as well as giving existing
video tennis players something new to enjoy. It also let the
developers narrow in on getting the feel of a solid backhand swing
just right.